Adelson Honored

by Editor
May 29, 2013 at 9:07 am

https://www.smartertimes.com/909/adelson-honored

The New York Times has ratcheted back its description of businessman and philanthropist Sheldon Adelson from "ultraconservative" (May 20 article) to merely "conservative" (today's article). Today's article also includes this passage:

As for the Palestinians, Mr. Adelson said, "They teach their children that Jews are descended from swine and apes, pigs and monkeys." Then he questioned their existence as a distinct ethnic group, saying they were "southern Syrians" or Egyptians until Yasir Arafat, who was leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, "came along with a pitcher of Kool-Aid and gave it to everybody to drink and sold them the idea of Palestinians."

These ideas, staples of the far right, are deeply offensive to the Palestinians — perhaps partly the point.

The Times tells us these ideas are staples of the far right and deeply offensive to the Palestinians, but it doesn't pass any judgment on whether they are true, which might be something that Times readers might be interested in knowing. As for the idea that Arabs teach their children that Jews are descended from swine and apes, this is hardly an idea confined to the far right. And it's not Darwin's theory of evolution we are talking about. Here is a New York Times news article from April 1, 2008 that appeared under the headline, "In Gaza, Hamas's Insults to Jews Complicate Peace" and reports:

At Al Omari mosque, the imam cursed the Jews and the "Crusaders," or Christians, and the Danes, for reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. He referred to Jews as "the brothers of apes and pigs" … The chairman of the Palestinian Scholars League, and a Hamas legislator, Mr. Abu Ras is popularly called "Hamas's mufti," because he is ready to give religious sanction to Hamas political structures. Last month, he criticized Egypt for closing the Gaza border at Israel's request. He complained, "We are besieged by the sons of Arabism and Islam, as well as by the brothers of apes and pigs."

A New York Times editorial issued January 15, 2013, headlined "President Morsi's Repulsive Comments," condemned remarks made in 2010 by the man who is now the president of Egypt in which he, as the Times put it, "urges Egyptians to 'nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred' for Jews and Zionists. In a television interview months later, he described Zionists as 'these bloodsuckers who attack Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.'"